8 steps to develop a taxonomy: as the foundation for all activities within the corporation relating to documents, a taxonomy can further a wide range of corporate objectives, such as enabling business processes, protecting intellectual property, and building the foundation for compliance. Developing a taxonomy requires the guidance of records management, IT, legal, compliance and the involvement of every business unit.

• Author: Choksy, Carol E.B.

A taxonomy is a high-level, hierarchical classification for documents and records that facilitates the management of recorded information throughout its life cycle. Its focus is on the purpose of information within and how it is used across the organization. Each organization requires a different taxonomy because each has unique processes, organizational configurations, core competencies, and histories.

A taxonomy is a living document that changes as the work within the company changes. It is never final because organizations constantly change their processes and organizational structures, sometimes due to mergers, acquisitions of new business units, or expansion into other countries. A good taxonomy should be flexible enough to handle changes so it never has to be recreated.

As the foundation architecture for managing documents within an enterprise, a taxonomy is the foundation architecture for records management.

Step 1: Select the Taxonomy Team

Information technology (IT), legal, compliance, and records management (RM) must be part of the taxonomy team because of the special knowledge each brings to the project:

* IT knows what the current technology environment can accomplish with regard to documents as well as what the planned future technology environment should accomplish. Part of the process of creating a taxonomy is to discover other technology opportunities or limitations that should be addressed.

* Legal knows about current litigation management problems the corporation is experiencing as well as current and potential statutory and regulatory impacts on specific documents and records series.

* Compliance knows what impacts the current and proposed regulatory environment will have on entire domains of documents and records series.

* Records management knows how end-users actually perform their work and what work-arounds have been created to avoid compliance with records management good business practices as well as gaps within the records management program.

Step 2: Determine Role in Corporate Strategy

As the foundation for all activities within the corporation relating to documents, the taxonomy is both a tool and an opportunity (See Figure 1.) The motivation for the taxonomy can be tactical, as with a departmental content management program, or strategic, as with making proprietary business processes more efficient.

Assign the resources, champions, operational and IT leads, and team members who will be interviewed in the process. At a minimum, a corporate representative from enterprise operations, RM, legal, compliance, and IT should be present. Developing a taxonomy will require that every business unit be surveyed, but the taxonomy cannot be created unit by unit, because each subsequent business unit will change the taxonomy created by the units that preceded it.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Define the Corporate Objectives to Be Addressed

To ensure the success of the taxonomy and subsequent compliance, the taxonomy creation project must be motivated by corporate objectives. The implementation of an enterprise taxonomy can further a wide range of corporate objectives. For example:

* Taxonomies make business processes more efficient, thus making employees more effective. Most business processes involve human interaction with documents, and the right person having the right documents at the right time is one of the foundations for efficient processes.

* Taxonomies protect intellectual property by identifying those information assets that constitute intellectual property and defining where they intersect and interface with business processes.

* Taxonomies enable confidentiality, security, and privacy by identifying the affected documents and their intersection with the business process.

* Taxonomies are the foundation for corporate compliance by creating a document grid for determining what statutes, regulations, standards, and business practices apply to each.

Include in communications about the project the definition of the corporate objectives that the organization expects to be addressed by the taxonomy initiative.

Define the Corporate Values to be Addressed

A taxonomy provides an opportunity to assign responsibility and accountability for each set of documents. It also provides a basis for training, auditing, and quality control methods. When taxonomy programs are well-implemented, employees develop higher expectations about document handling for each other, creating a self-reinforcing esprit de corps.

Include the corporate values to be addressed by the taxonomy initiative in communications about the project.

Step 3: Determine Business Purposes and Requirements for Taxonomy

This step involves conducting a round of surveys and interviews with representatives of the business units to determine what records-, document-, and content-related problems exist throughout the organization.

Clarify Role in Corporate Strategy

Enunciating a clear strategy in which the taxonomy plays a major role--including within the legal, compliance, IT, and RM functions--is vital to ensure buy-in from individuals who will be asked to participate in subsequent activities of the project, whether in surveys, interviews, or review cycles of draft versions of the taxonomy.

The strategy will also clarify which aspects of records/document/content management will be addressed (e.g., retention schedule, phases of the life cycle, user access, vital records) by the taxonomy initiative so that the survey can be tailored to those functions. Figure 2 on page 34 lists the phases and functions to be considered.

Clarify Information Technology Initiatives to Be Addressed

Content, documents, records, forms, and reports are all captured, created, or generated using IT systems. Each part of the life cycle for each of these categories as well as litigation management, compliance, and audits can also be problematic. The survey and interview process of Step 5 is the opportunity to address these specifically.

Determine Individuals to Interview to Define Requirements

The roles of the legal, compliance, IT, and RM functions will have been outlined as part of the definition of how the taxonomy will fit into the corporate strategy. Representatives of each of these groups must be interviewed for their input into the pressing needs of the organization.

The list of interviewees should include employees from various workgroups that are experiencing severe problems, as well as those that have found workable solutions. Employees from support workgroups should be interviewed in addition to employees from line-of-business workgroups.

Create and Distribute Survey

Before proceeding with interviews, develop a survey to begin to identify the records-, document-, and content-related problems that exist within the various departments and workgroups and to familiarize the interviewees with the types of issues to be discussed in the interviews.

The wording of the survey questions is critical, as many employees tend to identify "records" with paper. Questions should address "electronic documents" and "content" so that the full range of documentary problems within the group can be discerned. General questions such as, "What is the most pressing problem facing your workgroup?" should not be placed in conjunction with questions concerning records because respondents' answers will address records only, rather than wide-ranging issues such as employee turnover. Such issues nonetheless have an impact on the success of the taxonomy initiative; being able to determine that employee turnover is a problem will help diagnose the requirement: a need for clear accountability and procedures.

The survey should also include explanatory paragraphs alongside questions that reference...